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Andrew Fuller’s Two Conversions
Dr. David Saxon
Session 1
The subject of our four sessions today is Andrew Fuller, 18th-century
Particular Baptist pastor. Is he really worthy of this level of detailed scrutiny and
interaction?
I learned about Fuller and the revival of evangelical Calvinism in Particular
Baptist church life from Dr. Beale at Bob Jones University in the late 1980s. I
don’t recall, however, recognizing Fuller’s significance or, indeed, the importance
of the developments in this phase of Baptist history until Michael Haykin, British
scholar who taught for a number of years in Canada before settling down at SBTS
in Louisville, began publishing about it. He wrote a biography of Fuller’s friend
John Sutcliff in 1994,1 in which Fuller appears as a very significant figure. In 2000
Tom Nettles wrote a biographical sketch of Fuller that Haykin included in volume
2 of his four-volume The British Particular Baptists 1638-1910.2 A year later
Haykin published a short volume in his spirituality series on the spirituality of
Fuller.3
An explosion of interest in Fuller has followed. Haykin now heads the
Andrew Fuller Center for Baptist Studies, which publishes a periodical, Kettering,
holds an annual conference, and is producing a 15-volume collection of Fuller’s
writings. Over the last fifteen years or so, numerous volumes covering virtually
every aspect of Fuller’s ministry have appeared, with an excellent modern
biography published in 2015 to celebrate the bicentennial of his death.4
Of course, I’ve read all of it. That was my first attempt at humor in this
conference. I hope to continue reading and studying Fuller for many years to come.
In this conference, I will focus on Fuller’s major writings and contributions,
hoping to inspire you to get better acquainted with him. We will also seek practical
lessons from his life and thought.
To understand Fuller, we must briefly survey his historical and ecclesiastical
context.
1
One heart and one soul: John Sutcliff of Olney, his friends, and his times (Grand Rapids: Evangelical
Press, 1994).
2
Springfield, MO: Particular Baptist Press, 2000.
3
The Armies of the Lamb: The Spirituality of Andrew Fuller (Peterborough, Ontario: Joshua Press, 2001).
4
Peter Mordern, The Life and Thought of Andrew Fuller (1754-1815), Studies in Evangelical History and
Thought (London: Paternoster, 2015).
1The Context
The British Particular Baptists
By 1644, seven churches in London had begun immersing believers and
published the first London Confession to express their separatist ecclesiology and
their Calvinist orthodoxy. For the next forty-five years, these Particular Baptists—
so named to distinguish them from General Baptists who held to a more Arminian
soteriology—expanded across Britain, while experiencing considerable hardship
during the reigns of the Stuart kings, Charles I, Charles II, and James II.
When William and Mary promulgated the Act of Toleration in 1689,
Particular Baptists from across the kingdom gathered at London to celebrate their
new legal freedoms and to publish the Second London Confession, a baptized
version of the Westminster Confession that had originally been penned in 1677.
In the last decades of the 17th century, however, a reaction against religion in
general and theological precision in particular was setting in across Europe. This
was partly a reaction to the so-called Protestant Scholasticism that had reigned for
much of the 17th century; it was also likely a reaction against the religious wars that
had decimated Europe over the previous several hundred years.
Rationalism spread through the major denominations, taking various forms.
Deism and Socinianism (an early variety of Unitarianism) tried to remove the
supernatural from Christianity and exerted more influence than the number of their
adherents would suggest. Leading Anglicans embraced an Arminianism that was
more-or-less a polite humanism, irritated by the Puritans who continued to insist
that theology mattered.
The Baptists were not unaffected by these developments. The General
Baptists began tolerating heretical views of Christ and were riddled by Socinianism
by the middle of the 18th century. Rationalism was the major culprit in this
development. The Particular Baptists were slower to slide into heresy, but many of
their churches moved in a rationalistic direction nonetheless. Peter Toon has
documented the development of Hyper-Calvinism in 17th and18th century Britain,5
and, while this extreme Calvinism was not limited to the Baptists by any means, it
found able exponents among them and became quite influential.
A 17th century theologian in the Anglican Church, Tobias Crisp, extended
Calvinism in rationalistic directions, leading him to espouse supralapsarianism,6
5
The Emergence of Hyper-Calvinism in English Nonconformity 1689-1765 (London: The Olive Tree,
1967).
6
Supralapsarianism is the belief that God’s decree of election and reprobation is logically prior to his
decree to permit the Fall, so that election and reprobation have equal ultimacy, the Fall appears to be the
divine mechanism by which God reveals His justice in damning the reprobate.
2eternal justification,7 and antinomianism.8 His ideas were picked up early in the
18th century by a Congregationalist minister named Joseph Hussey. Hussey took
Crisp’s theology in a practical direction Crisp had not followed. Hussey argued
that faith is not a duty of unbelievers and, therefore, it is unscriptural to demand
repentance and faith of the non-elect.9 In the rationalistic environment of the early
18th century, Hussey’s teachings were welcomed by some Presbyterians,
Independents (Congregationalists), and Particular Baptists.
Three significant Baptist pastors adopted all or most of this Hyper-
Calvinism, and their influence led many Particular Baptist churches into it. They
were John Skepp of Cambridgeshire, who was directly influenced by Hussey and
became pastor of an influential London church; John Brine of Northamptonshire,
who became pastor of the same London church that Skepp had earlier pastored;
and John Gill also of Northamptonshire, who held a significant London pastorate
for fifty-one years, exerting enormous influence in the denomination.10 Both Brine
and Gill grew up in Kettering in Northamptonshire, so that Hyper-Calvinist
emphases were very strong in central England, and, although there were dissenting
voices in the capital, London also came to be dominated by this form of Calvinism
by the middle of the 18th century.
Hyper-Calvinism
It was in Northamptonshire, where Fuller is going to spend the majority of
his ministerial life, that “The Modern Question” was first debated. The question
was this: should the gospel be freely offered to unregenerate people without
respect to whether or not they may be elect? The majority of Reformed ministers
who weighed in on the question—Presbyterian, Independent, and Baptist—were in
the affirmative. A Baptist, Abraham Taylor, wrote The Modern Question
Concerning Repentance and Faith Examined in 1735, in which he argued that
Christ and the apostles often indiscriminately demanded that their listeners turn
from their sins and embrace the gospel.
Already, though, the teachings of Skepp, who died in 1721, and Gill and
Brine, who entered upon their pastoral ministries in 1719 and 1727, respectively,
had permeated central England and were having significant sway in Northampton
and other shires to the north and southeast of London. Numerous pastors published
on both sides of The Modern Question from the 1730s to the 1770s. Among the
7
Eternal justification is the belief that the principal justification of the elect occurs in the mind of God in
eternity past. Therefore, conversion is the realization of the elect that they are already justified.
8
See Toon, 49-69.
9
See Toon, 70-85.
10
See Toon, 93-103.
3Particular Baptists the influence of Gill was pronounced, and Hyper-Calvinist ideas
predominated in certain parts of the country, especially the central shires. Bristol
Baptist Academy largely resisted the Hyper-Calvinist logic and exerted wholesome
influence in the west and south, but the east, center, and north of the country—
including most of the large, wealthy churches in London—adopted it.
I will not here attempt to give a complete picture of Hyper-Calvinism, and it
should be remembered that very few pastors held to all the tenets of the system.
My focus will be on the two questions that Fuller principally grappled with: is faith
a duty required of all men?11 Is it appropriate to offer gospel promises to all men
consequent upon their repenting and believing?
Since we will meet with many of the Hyper-Calvinist arguments in the
course of seeing how Fuller responded to them, it will suffice here to state their
conclusions in these areas. First, faith is not a duty required of the non-elect. God
requires all people to obey His law, which includes love for Him and for one’s
neighbor. The gospel, however, is not part of God’s law; repentance and faith are
not duties incumbent on all men but rather gifts given to the elect. This logic
effectively leads to the answer of the second question. In its call for repentance and
faith, the gospel holds out the promise of forgiveness. No such promise applies to
the non-elect, and, therefore, it is wrong to offer it to them. When their opponents
pointed out the many examples of obedience, repentance, and faith being
demanded of sinners in Scripture, Hyper-Calvinists had resort to a distinction.
Toon reports, Hyper-Calvinists “held that God only required legal repentance and
common faith of the majority of the people in the crowds but did require
evangelical repentance and saving faith of the regenerate, elect people who
heard.”12 If that distinction seems a little murky to you, it does to me also. Toon
remarks, “They put forward very few passages of Scripture to prove their opinions
since they simply applied their hypothesis to all passages that were mentioned and
to their own satisfaction they believed that their way of seeing things was the
correct one.”13 Fuller will have to address this distinction.
The Evangelical Awakening
As the Particular Baptists were in the throes of trying to reach consensus on
The Modern Question, most of the other denominations in Great Britain were
experiencing spectacular revival. God unleashed John and Charles Wesley on
Britain in 1738, and soon Methodist preachers were swarming the countryside.
11
“Faith” is often used in the controversy as shorthand for repentance and faith, which were viewed as
indissolubly connected to one another.
12
Toon, 133.
13
Toon, 134.
4Particular Baptists felt little inclination to support these efforts, given the overt
Arminian theology of the leaders.
The Wesleys’ younger colleague, George Whitefield, was more difficult to
assess. He officially affirmed a Calvinism that shared much in common with their
own. Nevertheless, several factors contributed to Particular Baptists remaining
aloof from the Awakening. First, although the Established Church came to have an
adversarial relationship toward the revivalists, neither the Wesleys nor Whitefield
contemplated leaving the state church and were quite reluctant to criticize it as an
institution. The Baptists, on the other hand, were opposed to the establishment—
having been mistreated by it throughout their history—and were disinclined to
cooperate with Anglicans. Second, all of the leading evangelists of the Awakening
were pedobaptists. Even though Whitefield and the Wesleys consistently urged
their listeners to be born again, Baptists believed that infant baptism negatively
impacts the gospel. They rarely cooperated with pedobaptists in religious causes.
Finally, when they read about the impassioned pleas issued to audiences by
Whitefield and his Welsh Calvinist allies, like Howel Harris and Daniel Rowland,
Baptists suspected that Arminian theology might be informing their practice, no
matter their claims. Therefore, most Particular Baptists stood apart from the
Awakening throughout the 1740s, 50s, and 60s. Where Hyper-Calvinism
predominated, Baptists condemned the revival as obscuring the gospel and creating
false converts.
The result of all of this for Particular Baptists was not good. Between 1715
and 1753, the number of Particular Baptist churches in Britain declined by one-
third. In addition, many of the churches had aging memberships with little
outreach. Many pastors at the time noted with deep concern a corresponding
decline in spirituality and zeal.14
Into this environment came Andrew Fuller.
Fuller’s Conversion to Christ
Fuller was born on February 6, 1754 at Wicken, a village nearly Ely in
Fenland Cambridgeshire, in a small farmhouse. His parents were Robert Fuller and
Philippa Gunton. They were dissenters, but Philippa was the more committed of
the two. The family moved to Soham, 2 ½ miles from Wicken, in 1761 and joined
the Particular Baptist church there (Philippa’s mother had been a founding member
of the church).
14
Mordern, 40.
5Both sides of Andrew’s family traced their lineage back to 17th-century
Nonconformists. Andrew’s two older brothers followed their father in farming but
became deacons in Particular Baptist churches.
Fuller’s biographer comments that his “Fenland upbringing helps explain
some of the imagery he used (‘my hands hung down like a bulrush’, he once
wrote), together with his enduring countryman’s distrust of London. More
importantly, his tenacious, determined spirit and a certain independence of thought
can be attributed, in part, to his being a ‘son of the Fens’.”15
Andrew too worked as a farmer, developed a taste for athletics, especially
wrestling, and was not particularly religious in his teenage years.
In 1752 the Independent church in Isleham had split, when a portion of the
congregation separated to form a Baptist church in Soham, which was nicknamed
“The Little Meeting.” John Eve became the pastor shortly after its being
constituted.
From the beginning, Eve and the Soham Baptists were high Calvinists, the
dominant theology among Baptists of the Fens. As the Evangelical Awakening
raged around Soham, Eve and his church appear to have ignored it.
Fuller later reported that he never heard the gospel from Pastor Eve and
“never considered myself as any way concerned in what I heard from the pulpit.”16
At age 14 he read Bunyan’s Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners, his
marvelous autobiography, and Pilgrim’s Progress as well as Gospel Sonnets by
Ralph Erskine, the warmly evangelical Scottish Presbyterian. Through these
writings, Fuller came to conviction of his need of salvation. But the thought
passed, receiving little or no encouragement from the adults in his life.
In November 1769 at the age of 15, Fuller again came under deep
conviction. He wrote,
The fire and brimstone of the bottomless pit seemed to burn within my
bosom. I do not write in the language of exaggeration… I saw, that there
was no truth in me. I saw, that God would be perfectly just in sending me to
hell, and that to hell I must go, unless I were saved of mere grace, and as it
were in spite of myself… I never before knew what it was to feel myself an
odious, lost sinner, standing in need of both pardon and purification. 17
You might wonder how Fuller was coming to this point of conviction. He loved
Pastor Eve and was learning many wonderful biblical truths from him. He was
15
Mordern, 31.
16
Mordern, 44. See also Andrew Gunton Fuller, Memoirs of the Rev. Andrew Fuller in The complete
works of the Rev. Andrew Fuller: with a memoir of his life (London: G. & J. Dyer, 1845), xvi.
17
Mordern, 45. Memoirs, xvii.
6learning about God’s holiness and man’s sin, about Christ’s substitutionary
atonement and the Spirit’s power in drawing sinners to Christ. What Pastor Eve did
not give him was a direct offer to repent and believe the gospel. Instead, Fuller was
looking for a warrant in himself that he was elect. Conscious of his sin, however, it
seemed utterly presumptuous to him to look inward and see anything God would
want to save.
He went several months in desperate agony of spirit, fearing the wrath of
God but not knowing how he could find peace. His own testimony is heart-
breaking:
I was not then aware that any poor sinner had a warrant to believe in Christ
for the salvation of his soul, but supposed there must be some kind of
qualification to entitle him to do it; yet I was aware that I had no
qualifications. On a review of my resolution at that time, it seems to
resemble that of Esther, who went into the king’s presence, contrary to law,
and at the hazard of her life. Like her, I seemed reduced to extremities,
impelled, by dire necessity to run all hazards, even though I should perish in
the attempt. Yet it was not altogether from a dread of wrath that I fled to this
refuge; for I well remember that I felt something attracting in the Savior. I
must—I will—yes, I will trust my soul—my sinful, lost soul in his hands. If
I perish, I perish! However it was, I determined to cast myself upon Christ,
thinking, peradventure, he would save my soul.18
Fuller found a Savior happy to receive him. He continues,
In this way I continued above an hour, weeping, and supplicating mercy for
the Saviour’s sake: (my soul hath it still in remembrance, and is humbled in
me!) and as the eye of the mind was more and more fixed upon him, my
guilt and fears were gradually and insensibly removed.19
Fuller was born again, like Spurgeon 81 years later, at the age of 15.
Eve baptized the now 16-year-old Fuller in April 1770, and the Soham Little
Meeting accepted the teenager into membership. Although rather moribund
because of its High Calvinism, the church had at least enjoyed a fair amount of
unity up until this time. That was about to change.
In 1771, Fuller discovered a fellow church member, John Levit, drinking
immoderately. Though a young believer himself, he confronted Levit concerning
18
Memoirs, xviii.
19
Memoirs, xviii. See also Mordern, 46.
7his sin. Levit replied that the power to resist sin comes from grace, and he had not
received grace to overcome drinking, and, therefore, it was not his fault. The
theological antinomians would no doubt have cringed at this explanation, but this
portrayed pretty well the practical antinomianism that was sweeping Hyper-
Calvinist churches. If duty is limited to ability, then how can even believers be
held accountable for godly living? They have no power to live godly lives.
Fuller instinctively knew this was a mere excuse, and he told Levit so.
Furthermore, Fuller reported Levit’s offense to Pastor Eve. Pastor Eve commended
Fuller, and Levit was excommunicated. During the disciplinary discussions, Eve
commented that “whilst people had no power in and of themselves to do anything
spiritually good, they did have the power to obey the will of God ‘as to outward
acts.’”20 Eve appears to have been trying to escape antinomianism by saying
people in the church can be held accountable for their conduct even though it will
not be evangelical obedience unless God the Holy Spirit works in their hearts.
As high as Eve’s Calvinism was, it was not high enough for the majority of
the Soham congregation. Joseph Diver, one of the lay leaders of the congregation
and a close friend of Fuller, and some other members confronted the pastor and
said that believers do not have the power to do right apart from God’s enabling.
Eve no doubt agreed with that basic contention, but they were using that fact to
argue that people cannot be held accountable for their sinful actions. Fuller initially
sided with Eve, whom he admired greatly, but gradually he was won over to
Diver’s view. A fierce controversy ensued, shaking the church for several months.
Eve correctly believed his opponents were teaching antinomianism and resigned to
take a pastorate in Wisbech before 1771 ended. Mordern comments, “Eve’s high
Calvinism had not been consistent enough for the majority of his church members.
For the dominant party at Soham, any talk of human responsibility was enough to
arouse suspicion.”21
The effect on Fuller was that he was deeply agitated by the dispute and
began to harbor suspicions about High Calvinism. But he could not put his finger
on the problem and set about investigating it.
The church almost dissolved, but Diver held it together, preaching in the
absence of a minister most Sundays. When Diver could not speak, Fuller, although
a teenager, filled in. His first effort at preaching was well-received. When his
second sermon did not go as well, he did not preach for a year. A very sensitive
young man, Fuller struggled to minister without evident approbation from his
listeners. By 1773, Fuller was considering moving to London to learn a trade.
20
Mordern, 49.
21
Mordern, 50.
8Nevertheless, he consented to fill in for Diver again, the Lord blessed his efforts,
and he decided to pursue full-time ministry.
In January 1774, an elderly lady asked Fuller to preach her funeral, which he
did shortly thereafter. For the rest of that year, he began to eclipse Diver as the
preacher most in demand, and Diver happily yielded the opportunities to him. By
the end of the year, the Soham church had determined that Fuller should assume
their pastoral duties, and he accepted their call. He was installed as full-time pastor
of the small Particular Baptist Church in Soham, Cambridgeshire, on February 19,
1775.
On May 3, several ministers came to Soham to participate in Fuller’s
ordination. Most significant of these was Robert Hall, Sr., of Arnesby, some 80
miles away. Hall listened to Fuller’s account of the High Calvinism of Pastor Eve
and recommended that Fuller read Edwards on the will. Fuller determined to do so.
Fuller’s Conversion to Evangelical Calvinism
Fuller’s conversion to Christ, while obviously the most important event in
his life, was the first step in a pilgrimage away from a wrong view of the gospel.
Relative to the history of the church, perhaps even more significant was his
conversion to evangelical Calvinism from the Hypter-Calvinism in which he was
reared.
Early Wrestling
Settling into the pastorate at the Little Meeting in Soham, Fuller devoted
himself to reading and theological reflection. He never had the opportunity to
receive formal theological or ministerial instruction, but he had a very active mind
and was determined to dig to the bottom of things.
He sought out the Edwards work recommended to him by Hall and found
Veritus Redux by John Edwards of Cambridge. It was fine, but he didn’t see how it
had anything to do with High Calvinism. It would be two years before he
discovered that he had the wrong John Edwards. In the meantime, he read Gill’s
Body of Doctrinal Divinity, from which he learned a great deal. He also began
working through the writings of John Bunyan, who had gained fame in nearby
Bedfordshire. Fuller was struck by the differences between Gill and Bunyan.
I perceived, however, that the system of Bunyan was not the same with his
[Gill]; for that, while he maintained the doctrines of election and
predestination, he nevertheless held with the free offer of salvation to sinners
9without distinction. These were things which I then could not reconcile, and
therefore supposed that Bunyan, though a great and good man, was not so
clear in his views of the doctrines of the gospel as the writers who succeeded
him. I found, indeed, the same things in all the old writers of the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries that came in my way. They all dealt, as Bunyan
did, in free invitations to sinners to come to Christ and be saved; the
consistency of which with personal election I could not understand.22
Fuller, therefore, continued to preach High Calvinism, which is what his
church in Soham expected, but he was wracked by doubts and pursued a vigorous
regimen of reading. He studied Puritan writers, including Stephen Charnock,
Thomas Goodwin, and, above all, John Owen. Each seemed to be fully and
consistently Calvinist and yet breathing different air from what he found in Gill.23
In the autumn of 1775, he read Abraham Taylor’s 1735 work on “The
Modern Question.” Fuller was not particularly impressed by Taylor’s
argumentation overall, but Taylor’s appeals to the preaching of Christ and the
apostles made a major impression. It sure seemed that John the Baptist, Jesus
Christ, and the apostles called on unbelievers to repent and believe the gospel. The
Lord began bringing additional influences into Fuller’s life.
Probably through the encouragement of Robert Hall, Fuller led his church to
join the Northamptonshire Baptist Association on June 8, 1775. The Association
had begun in 1764 (Hall was one of the original members) and reflected a tendency
towards fellowship that resulted from the evangelical revival. High Calvinist
churches often rejected membership in any such association. It is probably a sign
of the Soham church’s confidence in Fuller that they voted unanimously to join the
Association, even though the congregation was still quite committed to Hyper-
Calvinism. The Association included churches in Northamptonshire,
Cambridgeshire (including Soham), in Leicestershire (where Arnesby was
located), and elsewhere. The small number of Particular Baptist churches led to
this geographically widespread fellowship. The annual meetings were generally
held in May or June, and it was in connection with the Association that Fuller
made two of his most important friendships.
John Sutcliff became the pastor of the Baptist church in Olney in
Buckinghamshire in 1775. Within a year, he and Fuller had become acquainted.
That same year, Fuller met John Ryland, Jr., the pastor of the Baptist church in
Northampton since 1771. Fuller says of Ryland and Sutcliff, “In them I found
familiar and faithful brethren; and who partly by reflection, and partly by reading
22
Memoirs, xxv.
23
Mordern, 83.
10the writings of Edwards, Bellamy, Brainerd, &c., had begun to doubt of the system
of false Calvinism to which they had been inclined when they first entered on the
ministry, or rather to be decided against it.”24 Fuller then hastens to add that they
lived sixty or seventy miles from Soham, so he was not able to interact with them
very often. He pursued his studies largely alone, but it was very encouraging to
know other pastors in the Association were entertaining the same doubts and
arriving at many of the same conclusions.
In 1777 Fuller finally came into possession of The Freedom of the Will by
the American Congregationalist pastor Jonathan Edwards. In the next session,
when we analyze Fuller’s argumentation against the Hyper-Calvinists, we will look
at the influence of Edwards on Fuller. Suffice it to say now that Edwards was
profoundly influential on all four men we have mentioned: Hall, Sutcliff, Ryland,
and Fuller. Probably, none of them understood Edwards so deeply or appropriated
him so pervasively as Fuller. Between 1777 and 1779, the combination of all of
these influences, but especially Fuller’s close attention to the text of Scripture, led
Fuller to a major break with the Hyper-Calvinism he had always known.
Soham Pastorate
Fuller was not doing these investigations in a vacuum, however. He was
leading a busy and sometimes difficult life. In December 1776, he married Sarah
Gardiner, a godly member of the Soham church. They seem to have had a happy
marriage. God blessed them with four children during their first four years, but
three of them died early. As common as infant mortality was in the 18th century, it
nevertheless caused Andrew and Sarah great grief. Added to these difficulties was
Fuller’s small salary of 13 pounds per year, which he attempted to supplement by
running a shop and then a school, but unsuccessfully. He received 5 pounds per
year from the Particular Baptist Fund in London, but the young family still
struggled to make ends meet.
The Little Meeting had 35 members when Fuller became pastor in 1775. By
1779, it had grown to 45 members, but it did not grow beyond that point during his
pastorate. On the one hand, the church probably couldn’t afford to pay him much
more. On the other hand, his growing evangelical convictions could not have been
missed by his congregation, who had run off their previous pastor over his
insufficiently consistent Hyper-Calvinism (and Eve had been a Hyper-Calvinist!).
Fuller became convinced of evangelical principles by 1779 and slowly
began introducing gospel invitations into his preaching. Ryland reported, “A tinge
of false Calvinism infected some of the people, who were inclined to find fault
24
Memoirs, xxv.
11with his ministry, as it became more searching and practical, and as he freely
enforced the indefinite calls of the gospel.”25 Members of the church reproached
him for his inconstancy. He was only 25 years old, and he was already abandoning
time-honored truths. A very sensitive person, Fuller found these personal attacks
very trying.
He knew how important these issues are, and he knew how liable he was to
err. He wrote in his diary, “Lord, thou hast given me a determination to take up no
principle at second-hand; but to search for everything at the pure fountain of thy
word. Yet, Lord, I am afraid, seeing I am as liable to err as other men, lest I should
be led aside from truth by mine own imagination.”26 Fuller was here struggling
with a tension that all thoughtful Baptists have faced. He was a priest before God
and determined to reason out the issues for himself. This was a sacred
responsibility. Nevertheless, the safest place to discover theological truth is in
connection with venerable church historical traditions. If we seek to reinvent the
wheel, we will usually drift off into error.
Fuller’s preaching took on a new earnestness, given his new theological
commitments. “A pulpit seems an awful place!—An opportunity for addressing a
company of immortals on their eternal interests—Oh how important! We preach
for eternity.”27
Fuller’s preaching began to draw people from outside the church to hear
him. The congregation barely approved of what he was doing and was certainly not
inclined to expand the building to handle the crowds. Word spread throughout the
Association of this dynamic young thinker and preacher.
Decision and Transition
Before 1779 closed, the church in Kettering, in Northamptonshire, which
had already moved in an evangelical direction, invited Fuller to become their
pastor. It was a larger, healthier church, but he declined, being committed to
Soham. Pastors in those days rarely changed churches, and doing so was usually
regarded as an admission of failure.
Three issues, however, were festering in Soham. (1) Opposition to his
developing evangelical Calvinism; (2) the Fullers’ inadequate salary, which was
becoming desperate; (3) and discipline problems, involving the exclusion of
several members for drunkenness and one for adultery. Relative to this third issue,
antinomian attitudes always complicate church discipline.
25
Mordern, 71.
26
Memoirs, xxviii.
27
Memoirs, xxxii.
12Kettering came calling again in the fall of 1781. They seemed uninterested
in finding a different pastor. They wanted Fuller. Robert Robinson of Cambridge
was asked for an opinion, and he recommended that Soham increase Fuller’s salary
to 26 pounds per year, and that Fuller stay in Soham for a 12-month trial. Hall and
Sutcliff were disappointed by this advice, but Fuller notified Beeby Wallis, the
lead deacon in Kettering, that he would not be able to come.
Nevertheless, things in Soham did not improve, and, after much agonized
soul-searching, Fuller decided to accept the Kettering invitation in May 1782. The
Fullers moved on October 2, causing considerable regret in the Soham
congregation, who finally seem to have awakened to what they were losing.
Kettering was 60 miles west of Soham in Northamptonshire. The transition
reflected the even bigger transition in his theology.
By this time, Fuller had completed a work that encapsulated his theological
studies of the previous seven years: The Gospel Worthy of All Acceptation. It
appears to have been completed by 1781, although Fuller did not publish it until
1785.
In his inaugural sermon at Kettering, Fuller unambiguously declared the
radical change that he had embraced.
I believe it is the duty of every minister of Christ plainly and faithfully to
preach the gospel to all who will hear it. And, as I believe the inability of
men to spiritual things to be wholly of the moral, and therefore of the
criminal kind—and that it is their duty to love the Lord Jesus Christ and trust
in him for salvation, though they do or no—I, therefore, believe free and
solemn addresses, invitations, calls, and warnings to them, to be not only
consistent, but directly adapted, as means in the hands of the Spirit of God to
bring them to Christ. I consider it as a part of my duty, which I could not
omit without being guilty of the blood of souls.28
Lessons
What do we learn from these two conversions in the life of Andrew Fuller?
Among other lessons, consider these:
1) The Word of God must be the principal catalyst for spiritual and
theological change. Fuller emphasizes in his Memoirs his relative
28
Thomas Nettles, “Andrew Fuller (1754-1815)” in Michael A. G. Haykin, The British Particular
Baptists 1638-1910, Vol. 2 (Springfield, MO: Particular Baptist Press, 2000), 116.
13isolation in tiny Soham so that readers will recognize that by far the most
important influence on his thinking was the Scriptures. In 1780, while
still at Soham, he penned a private covenant addressed to God. In it he
says,
O Let not the sleight of wicked men, who lie in wait to deceive, nor
ev’n the pious character of good men (who yet may be under great
mistakes), draw me aside. … Nor do thou suffer my own fancy to
misguide me. Lord, thou hast given me a determination, to take up no
principle at second hand; but to search for everything at the pure
fountainhead, thy Word.29
2) Formal education may not be essential for effective gospel ministry, but
reading and thinking are. The corollary to the first point is that everyone,
no matter how brilliant, needs help figuring out divine truth. Fuller
wrestled hard with the Scriptures, but he also kept up a steady diet of
reading. It is arrogant to do theology in a vacuum, and Fuller was humble
enough to learn from Bunyan, Owen, Edwards, many other Puritans,
often, even John Gill.
3) Fuller, Ryland, Sutcliff, Robert Hall, Sr., and, later, Robert Hall, Jr.,
William Pearce, and William Carey were brothers in Christ who
regularly sharpened one another as iron sharpens iron. What a powerful
tool friendship can be!
4) Finally, pastors of small churches can make a big difference. It was not
the London pastors who led in this revival. Most of them were
entrenched in High Calvinism and looked down their noses at a
commoner from the fens like Andrew Fuller. But God doesn’t need big
men to do His work. He likes to work through small men, and Fuller
certainly desired God to get all the glory for both of his conversions.
29
Mordern, 80.
14Principal Resources
Fuller, Andrew Gunton, ed. The Complete Works of the Rev. Andrew Fuller: with a
Memoir of His Life. London: G. & J. Dyer, 1845.
Garrett, James Leo. Baptist Theology: A Four Century Study. Mercer, GA: Mercer
University Press, 2009. Pages 175-189.
Haykin, Michael A. G. One heart and one soul: John Sutcliff of Olney, his friends,
and his times. Grand Rapids: Evangelical Press, 1994.
____________. The Armies of the Lamb: The spirituality of Andrew Fuller.
Peterborough, Ontario: Joshua Press, 2001.
Haykin, Michael A. G., ed. ‘At the Pure Fountain of Thy Word’: Andrew Fuller as
an Apologist. Studies in Baptist History and Thought. London: Paternoster,
2004.
Mordern, Peter. The Life and Thought of Andrew Fuller (1754-1815). Studies in
Evangelical History and Thought. London: Paternoster, 2015.
Nettles, Thomas J. “Andrew Fuller.” In Michael A. G. Haykin, ed. The British
Particular Baptists 1638-1910. Vol. 2. Springfield, MO: Particular Baptist
Press, 2000. Pages 96-141.
Nettles, Thomas J. The Baptists: Key People Involved in Forming Baptist Identity.
Vol 1: Beginnings in Britain. Ross-shire, UK: Mentor Press, 2005. Pages
243-278.
Roberts, Phil. “Andrew Fuller.” In George, Timothy and David S. Dockery.
Theologians of the Baptist Tradition. Nashville: Broadman & Holman, 2001.
Pages 34-51.
Toon, Peter. The Emergence of Hyper-Calvinism in English Nonconformity 1689-
1765. London: The Olive Tree, 1967.
15Andrew Fuller Between Two Fires
Battling Hyper-Calvinism and Arminianism
Dr. David Saxon
Session 2
In session 4, we will look at Fuller’s busy ministry as a pastor and
missionary statesman. Had he written nothing, he would appear in our history
books as a very important Particular Baptist pastor at a very important time in
Baptist history.
As we saw in session 1, however, Fuller was given a mind by God that
questioned, challenged, and eventually rejected what passed as orthodoxy in his
ecclesiastical tradition. Despite his lack of formal training, assiduous attention to
the biblical text combined with wide and discriminating theological reading led
Fuller to embrace the role of weighing in on the disputed theological topics of his
day. Brief acquaintance with his writings will demonstrate that his theological
interests were overwhelmingly practical. He thought and wrote as a pastor, not as
an ivory-tower theologian (I almost said, “as a professor,” but that would be a bit
close to home for many of us). If Fuller perceived something as a threat to his
people or, more broadly, to the gospel, he was going to study until he thought he
understood it, and then he was going to publish a refutation.
He never, however, wrote a book specifically on Calvinism and
Arminianism. As we will see, he interacted extensively with an Arminian, Baptist
pastor Dan Taylor, but he made no effort to be comprehensive in his responses to
Taylor. Similarly, his magnum opus, while targeting Hyper-Calvinism, does not
attempt to give a full explanation of Calvinism. One author suggests that Fuller
believed that “too much had already been written on the subject.”1
Nevertheless, in defending the gospel for his generation, he sought to chart a
biblical path between Hyper-Calvinism on the one hand and Arminianism on the
other. Of course, this drew fire from both. An early biographer, John Morris, put it
this way: Fuller found himself “between two fires; the Hyper-Calvinists on the
hills and the Arminians in the vallies [sic.].”2 By following Fuller down this path
between Hyper-Calvinism and Taylor’s brand of Baptist Arminianism, we can get
a clearer picture of Fuller’s variety of evangelical Calvinism, a variety that,
1
Clint Sheehan, “Great and Sovereign Grace: Fuller’s Defence of the Gospel against Arminianism” in
Michael A. G. Haykin, ed., ‘At the Pure Fountain of Thy Word’: Andrew Fuller as an Apologist, Studies
in Baptist History and Thought (London: Paternoster, 2004), 88.
2
Quoted in Peter Mordern, The Life and Thought of Andrew Fuller (1754-1815), Studies in Evangelical
History and Thought (London: Paternoster, 2015), 123.
16whatever flaws it may have, God used to energize Particular Baptists to be the
trailblazers of the Great Century of Christian missions.
The Gospel Worthy
When Fuller assumed the pastorate of the Baptist church in Kettering in
1782, he brought with him a manuscript he had recently completed during all the
turmoil of leaving Soham. It was a short treatise entitled The Gospel Worthy of All
Acceptation, or the Duty of Sinners to Believe in Jesus Christ. Therefore, Fuller
completed his magnum opus when he was twenty-seven years old, somewhat like
Calvin at the same age publishing the first edition of his Institutes.
Unlike Calvin, however, Fuller was quite reluctant to send his manuscript
out into the world. He knew he would ruffle feathers with his arguments and did
not desire to get sidetracked into endless polemical discussions. After all, he was a
busy pastor. When he shared his work with Ryland, Sutcliff, and Hall, however,
they urged him to publish it. He finally acquiesced, and Gospel Worthy went to the
presses in 1785. We will first consider briefly the chief arguments of his book.
Fuller’s Foundation
As Fuller begins, he positions himself as a firm Calvinist. He affirms belief
in all five points of Calvinism, specifying, in particular, that he holds to
unconditional election. In the process, though, he argues for a basic philosophical
stance that already begins to separate him from the higher Calvinists among his
readers. “God,” he writes, “has ever maintained these two principles: All that is
evil is of the creature, and to him belongs the blame of it; and all that is good is of
himself, and to him belongs the praise of it.”3 Many of the Hyper-Calvinists with
whom Fuller was contending were much more willing to speak of election and
reprobation in terms that smacked of equal ultimacy. Gill, for instance, could write,
“The sole, moving and impulsive cause of [reprobation]4 (is) what Christ has
expressed, ‘Even so Father, for so it seemed good in thy sight.’”5 Fuller, instead,
employs an asymmetric way of expressing the difficult question of God’s relation
3
The Gospel Worthy of All Acceptation in The complete works of the Rev. Andrew Fuller: with a memoir
of his life (London: G. & J. Dyer, 1845), 151. Italics in the original.
4
His language is “such a decree,” but in the context he is discussing reprobation.
5
Peter Toon, The Emergence of Hyper-Calvinism in English Nonconformity 1689-1765 (London: The
Olive Tree, 1967), 110, quoting John Gill, Body of Doctrinal Divinity, Vol. I, p. 288. Earlier in the
section, Gill expresses the same idea with these words: “The moving, or impulsive cause of God’s
making such a decree by which he has rejected some of the race of Adam from his favor, is not sin, but
the good pleasure of his will” (“Of the Decree of Rejection, of Some Angels, and of Some Men” 2C2).
17to evil. As a Calvinist, Fuller held to God’s sovereignty over all things, and,
therefore, that sin is finally part of God’s plan, permitted for sufficiently wise
reasons. Unlike the supralapsarians, however, he scrupulously avoided language
that directly charges God with causing evil.
Fuller’s other interesting observation in his preliminary remarks anticipates
many discussions to be held in the aftermath of publishing the book. The Hyper-
Calvinists, whom he labels “Antinomians,” deny the responsibility of unbelievers
to believe. Why? Because they lack the ability to do so. The Arminians, on the
other hand, affirm the ability of unbelievers to believe because they have the
responsibility to do so.6 Fuller comments, “Thus, as in so many other cases,
opposite extremes are known to meet. Where no grace is given, they are united in
supposing that no duty can be required; which, if true, ‘grace is no more grace.’”7
Although the heart of Fuller’s case, as suggested in the full title of the book,
addresses faith as a duty, his concern for practical theology is evident as he begins.
Hyper-Calvinists, in effect, teach that saving faith consists in a person’s believing
that he is elect. One should not believe he is elect unless there are evidences of the
Spirit’s work in his heart to give him warrant for so believing. Therefore, faith, in
Fuller’s description of their position, “consists in a persuasion of our interest in
Christ and in all the benefits of his mediation.”8
Fuller believes this understanding of faith is theologically wrong and
pastorally wrong-headed. First, he queries how a person can be saved by believing
something that is not revealed in Scripture. It is obvious that the specific interest
that an individual person has in Christ is not revealed in Scripture. Fuller’s right
about this: I’ve scoured the Scriptures and have yet to find myself mentioned by
name there. “Nothing,” Fuller argues, “can be an object of faith, except what God
has revealed in his word.”9 In telling or implying to people that they should trust
that they are elect, Hyper-Calvinists are directing people away from objective truth
and encouraging them to focus on their subjective feelings.
Related to his first argument, Fuller pushes further along the same lines and
insists that saving faith in the Scriptures always has an object that lies outside the
6
This is my language. Fuller expresses the idea in a slightly more complex way: “The Arminian, though
he professes to take the blame of the evil upon himself, yet feels no guilt for being a sinner, any further
than he imagines he could, by the help of Divine grace, given to him and all mankind, have avoided it. If
he admit the native depravity of his heart, it is his misfortune, not his fault; his fault lies, not in being in a
state of alienation and aversion from God, but in not making the best use of the grace of God to get out of
it.” Gospel Worthy, 151.
7
Gospel Worthy, 151.
8
Gospel Worthy, 152.
9
Gospel Worthy, 153.
18believer. It is the Object that renders any faith effectual, and the Object of saving
faith must be Christ, not the sinner’s internal state.
The critique becomes more devastating as Fuller goes deeper yet. “The
grand object on which faith fixes is the glory of Christ, and not the happy condition
we are in, as interested in him. … If we be concerned only for our own security,
our faith is vain, and we are yet in our sins.”10 In a twist that no doubt caused real
pain to Hyper-Calvinists, Fuller is accusing them of producing a man-centered
gospel that fails to focus faith on the glory of Christ. Urging people to look inward
for warrant that they are elect would certainly seem to have that effect. Fuller
gladly acknowledges that real faith will lead to consolation (he cites Romans 5:1),
but the object of faith can’t be my own well-being.
Fuller closes his case against the Hyper-Calvinist idea of having a warrant to
believe by citing various New Testament passages in which people believe in
Christ, not in their own internal state of already being blessed. His examples come
from the Gospels, and Fuller admits that they are not perfectly analogous to saving
faith.11 The situations are sufficiently parallel for Fuller to conclude, “A persuasion
of Christ being both able and willing to save all them that come unto God by him,
and consequently to save us if we so apply, is very different from a persuasion that
we are the children of God, and interested in the blessings of the gospel.”12
Duty Faith
The second major section of the book deals with duty faith, the crux of the
debate between Fuller and the Hyper-Calvinists. Fuller provides six “arguments to
prove that faith in Christ is the duty of all men who hear, or have opportunity to
hear, the Gospel.”13 His first argument, which extends for twenty-three paragraphs,
some of which are substantial, is purely exegetical. “Unconverted sinners are
commanded, exhorted, and invited to believe in Christ for salvation.”14 After citing
numerous passages in which such offers occur, Fuller addresses the attempt by
Hyper-Calvinists to evade the clear meaning of these texts.
It is a grievous misapplication of such language to consider it as expressive
of a mere attendance upon the means of grace, without any spiritual desire
10
Gospel Worthy, 153.
11
It is curious that he did not use the Philippian jailer or other examples from Acts that, it seems, would
have demonstrated his point more precisely. He appears to have wanted examples in which Christ offers
Himself directly as the object of faith.
12
Gospel Worthy, 153.
13
Gospel Worthy, 157.
14
Gospel Worthy, 157.
19after God; and to allow that unregenerate sinners comply with it. Nothing
can be further from the truth. The Scriptures abound in promises of spiritual
and eternal blessings to those who thus hearken, hear, and seek after God:
such exercises, therefore, must of necessity be spiritual, and require to be
understood as including faith in Christ.15
Fuller’s second argument is that “every man is bound cordially to receive
and approve whatever God reveals.”16 If God demands that men love Him, if He
demands that men repent of their sins, if He demands that men believe the gospel,
what right do the Hyper-Calvinists have to turn to the sinner and say, “Don’t worry
about what God has commanded you to do. Unless you detect internal warrant that
you are elect, you have no power to comply with these commands and are,
therefore, exempt from doing so”?17 Gill and Brine, among others, felt the force of
this. They acknowledged in their writings that all men are responsible to love God
with all their hearts, minds, and souls, and to live in accordance with such love.
Sinners’ failure to do so exacerbates their guilt.18 To solve this dilemma, they had
recourse to the distinction, already mentioned, that God demands “legal
repentance” and “common faith” but not the evangelical, saving varieties of either
one. Fuller scoffed at this obvious evasion of the clear import of God’s commands
for repentance and faith. It is pure sophistry to argue that the same command
issued to a group of people is a call for mere intellectual faith to the subset who are
non-elect but is a call to saving faith to the elect.
Third, “Though the gospel, strictly speaking, is not a law, but a message of
pure grace; yet it virtually requires obedience, and such an obedience as includes
saving faith.”19 This is an extension of the previous point, highlighting the fact that
many of the commands God gives sinners are issued in connection with the
promises of the gospel if the sinners obey. Interestingly, Fuller calls on John
Owen, who clearly rejects the Hyper-Calvinist distinction and argues for the
necessity of universal obedience to God’s commands. Fuller also cites the NT
usage of expressions like “the obedience of faith,” “obeying the gospel,” “obeying
the truth,” and “obeying Christ.” “Obedience supposes previous obligation.”20
Fuller’s fourth argument complements the third. Throughout Scripture
failure to believe is attributed to voluntary ignorance, pride, dishonesty of heart,
15
Gospel Worthy, 158.
16
Gospel Worthy, 159.
17
This question expresses Fuller’s more detailed argument in my simplified terms.
18
In their Reformed context, these theologians believed sinners are still bound to the Covenant of Works.
“The moral law is binding on all people in its demand for love to God and man.” Toon, 132.
19
Gospel Worthy, 161.
20
Gospel Worthy, 161.
20and aversion of heart. Unbelievers have “an evil heart of unbelief,” Hebrews tells
us. But if they have no obligation to believe, it can hardly be described as a sin not
to do so.
God, however, has promised to inflict terrible punishments on sinners
precisely because they are unbelievers. Many passages use such language. What
could be clearer than John 3:18: “He that believeth not is condemned already,
because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.”21
Scarcely less clear is 1 Thessalonians 2:10-12, which include these words: “they
received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved. … that they all might
be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness.”
Fuller cites several other passages with similar import.
Fuller’s sixth and final argument is that “other spiritual exercises, which
sustain an inseparable connexion with faith in Christ, are represented as the duty of
men in general.”22 He proves that God demands that all men love Him, that all be
thankful, that all glorify Him as God, that all love Christ, that all fear God, that all
repent, and that all be humble. These are all spiritual duties, and the fact that
natural man can do none of them does not in the least make him less liable for
failing to do them.
Defending Evangelical Calvinism
The completed argument is clear, biblical, and logically rigorous. One might
even say unanswerable. But, of course, it did not go unanswered. As Fuller had
expected, he was greeted with a deluge of communications from angry Hyper-
Calvinists, many of whom lived within shouting distance in Northamptonshire,
Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire, and London. Fuller’s son reports that many of the
letters to him were bereft of argumentation and “fraught with doggerel of the very
lowest grade.”23 Four pastors, however, wrote serious and respectful challenges to
Fuller’s work: William Button, a Hyper-Calvinist Baptist pastor in London;
Abraham Booth, a respected High Calvinist Baptist pastor, also in London;
Archibald McLean, a Scotch Baptist pastor influenced by the Sandemanians (we
will consider McLean next session); and Dan Taylor, the General Baptist pastor
mentioned earlier.
Fuller expended considerable energy responding to each of these
correspondents between 1785 and 1800, developing and occasionally revising his
21
Emphasis in the original.
22
Gospel Worthy, 165.
23
Andrew Gunton Fuller, Memoirs of the Rev. Andrew Fuller in The complete works of the Rev. Andrew
Fuller: with a memoir of his life (London: G. & J. Dyer, 1845), xlii.
21argumentation in the process. In 1801, he issued a revised edition of the Gospel
Worthy. The main argument remained largely unchanged, but he appended a
lengthy section in which he responded to the chief objections he had encountered.
We will notice the most important of these, especially since his answers dig down
into his fundamental theological and philosophical commitments.
Priority of Exegetical Theology
Fuller begins with a summary statement: “The principal objections that are
made to the foregoing statement of things are taken from—the nature of original
holiness, as it existed in our first parents—the Divine decrees—particular
redemption—the covenant of works—the inability of man—the operations of the
Spirit—and the necessity of a Divine principle in order to believing.”24 He fully
intends to interact with each of these concerns and do his best to counteract them.
First, though, he makes a comment that frankly endeared him to me: “It also
deserves to be considered, whether objections drawn from such subjects … in
which we may presently get beyond our depth, ought to weigh against that body of
evidence which has been adduced from the plain declarations and precepts of the
Holy Scriptures.”25 In other words, don’t let arguments from systematic theology
override exegetical theology!
Before proceeding with the objections, Fuller further endears himself to me
by arguing from church history. By this time, Fuller had sampled many of the
reformers and seventeenth-century Puritan theologians. He was astonished by how
novel Hyper-Calvinism was and how out of step with both the Reformed and
Particular Baptist traditions. He wryly comments, “The writings of Calvin himself
would now be deemed Arminian by a great number of our opponents.”26
Second, he makes an observation regarding holding apparently conflicting
doctrines in tension that I believe deserves to be quoted in full. So, with apologies
for the long quote:
Were a difficulty allowed to exist as to the reconciling of these subjects, it
would not warrant a rejection of either of them. If I find two doctrines
affirmed or implied in the Scriptures, which, to my feeble understanding,
may seem to clash, I ought not to embrace the one and to reject the other
because of their supposed inconsistency; for, on the same ground, another
person might embrace that which I reject, and reject that which I embrace,
and have equal Scriptural authority for his faith as I have for mine. Yet in
24
Gospel Worthy, 167.
25
Gospel Worthy, 167.
26
Gospel Worthy, 168.
22this manner many have acted on both sides: some, taking the general
precepts and invitations of Scripture for their standard, have rejected the
doctrine of discriminating grace; others, taking the declarations of salvation
as being a fruit of electing love for their standard, deny that sinners without
distinction are called upon to believe for the salvation of their souls. Hence it
is that we hear of Calvinistic and Arminian texts; as though these leaders had
agreed to divide the Scriptures between them. The truth is, there are but two
ways for us to take: one is to reject them both, and the Bible with them, on
account of its inconsistencies; the other is to embrace them both, concluding
that, as they are both revealed in the Scriptures, they are both true, and both
consistent, and that it is owing to the darkness of our understandings that
they do not appear so to us.27
Answering Objections
After addressing an objection relative to Adam that I will omit,28 Fuller deals
with a fundamental problem with the Hyper-Calvinist position. These false
Calvinists, as he calls them, base their duty on God’s secret, sovereign will rather
than on His revealed will. Trying to do so leads them into positions that are both
unscriptural and impossible to practice consistently. On the latter point, Fuller
wonders why Hyper-Calvinists employ means to do many temporal things: to dress
and go to work, to eat and sleep, to study and memorize Scripture, to take
medicine, etc. If God has decreed the results of all these activities, why bother
doing them? The truth is, Hyper-Calvinists believe in the necessity of means for
everything except conversion. More importantly, though, they are also unbiblical.
Fuller says, “[Paul] believed the doctrine of Divine decrees, or that God ‘worketh
all things after the counsel of his own will;’ but he had no idea of making these
things any part of the rule of duty; either so as to excuse his countrymen from the
sin of unbelief, or himself from using every possible means that might accomplish
their salvation.” He then cites several passages that show Paul both condemning
his countrymen for sins and striving to win them.29
More complex is Fuller’s response to the third objection, which relates to
penal, substitutionary atonement. Fuller interpreted the Hyper-Calvinists as
arguing that the death of Christ purchased the exact number of the elect, paying the
27
Gospel Worthy, 168. Emphases in the original.
28
Hyper-Calvinists made the odd claim that Adam in the Garden was not expected to live by faith in the
Mediator and so faith in the Mediator can be no part of the Covenant of Works expected of unbelievers.
Fuller more-or-less dismisses this objection as speculative.
29
Gospel Worthy, 170.
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